El Otro Lado: A Night in Tijuana Part II

"Donde vamos?" asked her mother in a harsh, scratchy tone. Lilly corrected and said that she wasn't invited and to please drive on one lane not two! About ten minutes later, Lilly's mother left the freeway and dropped us off at La Dax store, at the corner of Revolucion and Constitucion. La Dax is the place where everyone meets. It's the CVS of Tijuana, it's the center and it looks like every other corner; there's a taco stand, a hot dog stand, a public telephone and a candy stand too. So why do people meet there? Lilly says that the five-foot sign makes it hard to miss plus, it's also a catchy name. Just then, a black 4Runner pulled in front of us and we hopped in.

Immediately, Lilly's friends began teasing her for being an hour late. We waited for you at La Dax for an hour, we missed dinner, we're starving, we worried for you, oh Lilly all because of you, ahh-hhh!

"No me hagan esto," don't do this to me,she half wailed. During the sixty-minute MTS bus ride that took us to the border, Lilly had filled me in about her friends: two of the girls, Chrees and Grecia, attend SDSU; the only guy in the crowd is Eli, a third year at UCSD, and the girl driving is Melissa, another student from SDSU.

"Todos, mi amiga Jane," Lilly introduced me to her friends who apathetically said hi back.
"Uh, Juana," I corrected. "In Spanish es Juana."
"Juana la Cubana?"
"No, Juana la Peruana."
"Ahhh," and they laughed.

Juana la Peruana, that's right. I'm Peruvian, not Cuban. And not Mexican. Just a Latina from Los Angeles with a Chicano accent. But when Lilly and her friends hummed through topics about whatever happened to "ese wey" last week and the upcoming Gloria Trevi concert in their perfect Mexican-Spanish accent I decided: Ok, make that a weak and broken Chicano accent. In high-school, my Chicana friends would tell me to stop killing the Spanish language and to please stick to English, you gringa, aren't you in Honors English anyway?

Midnight. 12:20 blinked on the neon blue backlit screen of the car's stereo. The 4Runner drive was smooth, yet humid and stuffy. Outside, the road dazzled with specks of orange crawling up the hill like a disarticulated army of ants. A puny fence ran on the left side of the road, could it be? Chrees nodded toward my direction and said, "Gringolandia." Get it? Gringo-land-ia.

Three fences lined the border in the ghastly midnight fog, or was it smog? Flashes and lights blinded me every few meters and all I could think about was how much energy and money the US fritters away on border patrol.

Between 1993 and 2008, the US spent more than 20 billion dollars on border enforcement: surveillance cameras, high-tech ground sensors to detect movement, and a few unmanned border patrol fleets that cost 14 million dollars (each) to build. US border patrol also tripled in size and 700 miles of fencing was built under the Secure Fence Act of 2006. And in spite of these developments, the number of border crossers keeps rising with a success rate of over 90 percent.

"Que... waste," I muttered.
"Que?"
"Que gasto," I corrected.
"Ay si, mucha gente muere en eso, todos conocen alguien que murió en el desierto."
Oh yes, so many people die trying to cross, everyone knows someone who died in the desert.

We passed by a few signs that read Ensenada. We're going to Ensenada?